


Learning Styles

by alloutforthewar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 18:57:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5939637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alloutforthewar/pseuds/alloutforthewar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He forgives her this last barrier between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning Styles

Scully is tactile and aural where he is a visual creature. 

She often closes her eyes when they make love, throwing a forearm across them as her mouth falls slackly open, or squeezing her eyelids together against him as he moves within her. She will reach blindly for his hand, intertwining their fingers, holding them against her breast so that he can feel the strength of her heartbeat. She scrapes her nails across his scalp as he slides down between her legs, her hands speaking to him what she can’t bring her eyes to convey.

She caresses him generously, fingertips sliding over hot skin, blindly tracing his body as though she were a cartographer and he her undiscovered territory. There is not an inch of him that she has not touched, but she does it all with her eyes downcast, unable to have that last connection to him as she feels her way. 

They speak intimately with their eyes, they always have, and when they are joined in every other conceivable way it becomes too much for her, too exposing, terrifying. She buries her face in his throat, in his shoulder, into his hair, holds him tightly to her and whispers to him, pleas and encouragement, and he can hear the fear in her voice alongside the need. They are, at least, getting better with words. 

But he, he is drunk off the sight of her. He catalogues every minute change in her expression, every flutter of her fingers, the different complexities of the crease between her brows. He watches the angle of her jaw as it moves soundlessly, the rise and fall of her chest as she gasps for air. He revels in the flush that spreads across her alabaster skin, the sheen of sweat that develops to trickle down between her breasts, the gradient of her waist as it slopes towards her hips. 

He doesn’t want to miss a thing, doesn’t want a single motion of hers to go unnoticed, undocumented. He lives for the way she catches her bottom lip between her teeth, for the way her thighs quiver as she comes, for the perfect strength of her back as she arches off the sheets. He stores every image of her away in his mind, playing them in an endless loop, the long line of her throat, the toss of her head, that perfect, implausible moment when her legs spread for him. 

She has gifted him with this visceral knowledge of her, with the right to watch her, and he refuses to sacrifice a moment of it. 

A small part of him remains terrified that he really did lose his mind. That his eyes and his brain are disconnected, are feeding each other false images, that what he sees is only what he wants to see. He needs every memory of her to convince himself that she is real. 

And he forgives her this last barrier between them. It is self-protection, he knows. What they are doing is overwhelming for them both, awe-inspiring, but he recognises that this is the most vulnerable she has ever been with another person, and she needs this final semblance of control, one last illusion of distance to convince herself that she is not lost, that her sovereignty has not been threatened. And he has no doubt that her fear will subside. They just both have to get used to the idea that neither of them are going anywhere. That this can last. That they deserve it. 

“Scully,” he says, pulling back to look down at her, cupping her cheek. “Look at me.” 

And she does.


End file.
